Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination

South Africa and the West

Veit Erlmann

How do Western images of Africa and African representations of the West mirror one another? Here, Erlmann examines the complex issues involved in the making of modern identities in Africa, Europe, and the US via a study of two striking episodes in the history of black South African music. The first is a pair of tours of two black South African choirs in England and America in the early 1890s; the second is a series of engagements with the international music industry as experienced by the premier choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo after the release of Paul Simon's celebrated Graceland album in 1986.

Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination

South Africa and the West

Veit Erlmann

Description

How was Africa seen by the West during the colonial period? How do Europeans and Americans conceive of Africa in today's postcolonial era? Such questions have preoccupied anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars for years. But few have asked the reverse: how did--and do--Africans see Europe and the United States? Fewer still have wondered how Western images of Africa and African representations of the West might mirror one another.

In a detailed study spanning from the late nineteenth century to the present, renowned anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Veit Erlmann examines the very creation of a global imagination for black South Africans, Europeans, and African Americans. To this end, he explores two striking episodes in the history of black South African music. The first is a pair of tours made by two black South African choirs in England and America in the early 1890s; the second is a series of engagements with the international music industry as experienced by the premier choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo after the release of Paul Simon's celebrated Graceland album in 1986.

Readers will find the cast of characters involved in these intertwined and international dramas at once telling and impressive. Among the many players are African National Congress co-founder Saul Msane, Queen Victoria, African-American musician and impresario Orpheus McAdoo, Xhosa Christian prophet Ntsikana, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michael Jackson, and Spike Lee. Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination tells the story of how these artists, activists, and agents effectively invented each other in travel diaries, religious hymns, concert performances, music videos, Broadway plays, and autobiographies. Erlmann also argues that the resultant mixture of myths and fictions--as distinctly imagined by these diverse historical actors--entangled South Africa and the West in ways that often obscured the newly emergent global imbalances of power, or else blurred the polarities of the colonial and postcolonial world.

Ultimately, this book reports on a transatlantic dialogue that carries direct and profound implications for the world's arts and cultures. It is the black diasporic discussion between South Africa and the West, and it is a conversation--about society, music, and Utopia--that is still in progress.

Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination

South Africa and the West

Veit Erlmann

Author Information

Veit Erlmann studied musicology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy in Berlin and Cologne, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1978. He has since done fieldwork in several African countries, and has taught at the University of Natal, the University of Chicago, the University of Witwatersrand, and the Free University of Berlin. He is currently Professor and Endowed Chair in the School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.

Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination

South Africa and the West

Veit Erlmann

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Alan P.Merriam Prize given by the Society for Ethnomusicology and Awarded Honorable Mention by the 2000 Chicago Folklore Committee